A spending report should compare what money meant on the day you spent it. Budgie values each imported and newly saved transaction in your base currency using the exchange rate from the transaction date.
Multi-currency budgets fail quietly when they convert old spending with today’s rate. A coffee bought in hryvnia ten years ago, a rent payment in dollars last month, and a bank import from yesterday cannot be added together fairly unless every row carries a value in the same reporting currency.
Budgie’s answer is transaction-date valuation. Each transaction entry keeps its original amount and currency, then stores a nullable base-currency value calculated from the best historical rate available for that date. The original record stays intact, while analytics can sum one consistent value.
This matters most after a migration. If you import years of spending from a previous app through CSV import, Budgie can rebuild the base values from historical exchange rates instead of treating old rows as if they happened today.
Every financial app has to choose what the transaction row means. Budgie separates two ideas that are often mixed together:
That gives Budgie two strengths at once. You can audit the original bank or CSV data, and spending analytics can still sum categories, tags, and periods without guessing which rate to use.
Older exports often contain the account currency and amount, but no exchange-rate snapshot. Budgie treats that as incomplete valuation data, not as corrupt transaction data. The entry is still usable; it simply needs a base value before it should affect multi-currency charts.
New transactions follow the same rule at write time. Manual entries, CSV imports, and bank sync transactions save their base amount as they are inserted when the source does not already provide a usable valuation.
Net worth and account balances answer a different question from spending analytics. Net worth asks, “What are my holdings worth now?” Spending analytics asks, “What did this cost me then?” Those questions should not share the same conversion rule.
For historical spending, Budgie keeps the transaction-date base value stable. If you change your main reporting currency, the app can rebuild those stored values against the new base currency. If a better historical data source is added, the same nullable columns can be recalculated without changing your original transaction amounts.
That is the point of multi-currency accounts: show today’s portfolio with today’s rates, but show historical expenses with historical rates.
No. The account-currency amount remains the source of truth. Base-currency fields are derived values used for reporting and can be recalculated later.
Budgie leaves the base value empty until a suitable rate exists. That is safer than inventing a value, because analytics can identify unvalued rows instead of silently mixing guessed totals with real totals.
Mobile analytics need to be fast. Storing the base amount lets Budgie sum large histories directly in SQL, while keeping the exchange rate available for audit and future rebuilds.
Yes. The stored base fields are nullable derived data. Budgie can clear and rebuild them from historical rates while preserving the original transaction amounts.
Join the Budgie waitlist and be the first to experience truly private expense tracking.
Join Waitlist2025-02-05
A comprehensive developer's guide to Mint alternatives after the shutdown. Detailed comparison of Budgie, Actual Budget, Firefly III, Lunch Money, YNAB, and more.
Read article→2026-05-07
Financial aggregators centralise millions of bank credentials in one place — a magnet for attackers. Offline-first architecture eliminates the target. Here's how Budgie connects to banks without handing your credentials to a third party.
Read article→